• The Ancestral Landscape
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The Ancestral Landscape

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This monograph presents insights of general historical and intellectual interest derived from the Shang oracle bone inscriptions from Anyang. The insights are integrated with data from other fields...
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  • 01 January 2000
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This monograph presents insights of general historical and intellectual interest derived from the Shang oracle bone inscriptions from Anyang. The insights are integrated with data from other fields, including metereology, botany, zoology, astronomy, sociology, and archaeology. By presenting a relatively large number of inscriptions, Keightley hopes to give readers an almost tactile sense, not only of what it was like to be a Late Shang king and a Late Shang diviner, but also of what it is to be a scholar who works with these materials. And by translating, in context, more than a hundred and fifty of the inscriptions, he also hopes to introduce readers to the ways in which the earliest written documents yet found in China may be studied.
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Price: $32.00
Pages: 226
Publisher: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Imprint: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Series: China Research Monograph
Publication Date: 01 January 2000
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781557290700
Format: Paperback
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David Keightley was professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Berkeley. His research has focused on early Chinese civilization and oracle bone script. His publications include Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China, The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space, and Community in Late Shang China (ca. 1200-1045 B.C.), and Working for His Majesty. Education: B.A., Columbia University; Ph.D., Columbia University

Preface 
Citation and Transcription Conventions 

1. Climate 
2. Agriculture 
    Agricultural Schedule 
    Pests and Diseases 
3. Time: Days, Nights, and Suns 
    Day and Night 
    Sun Cult 
    The Shang Day 
4. Time: Calendrical Structures 
    The Sixty-Day Cycle 
    The Xun 旬 Week 
    The Lunation 
    The Five-Ritual Cycle 
    The Numbered Si 祀 Ritual Cycle 
5. Space: Center and Periphery 
    The Capital or Cult Center 
    Tu 土: The Four Lands 
    Fang 方 Areas and Powers 
    Wu Powers 
    Goings Out and Comings In 
6. Space: Cosmos and Orientation 
    Orientation 
    Cardinal Directions: The Land 
    Cardinal Directions: The Weather 
    Divination Bones as World Maps 
7. Community: The Land and Its Inhabitants 
    The Royal Community 
    Other Communities 
    Men, Animals, and Landscape 
    Powers on the Land 
8. Cosmologies and Legacies: The "Winds" of Shang 

Figures 
Tables 
Key to the Inscriptions Translated, by Reference Number
Index to the Inscriptions Translated
Bibliography A: Abbreviations for the Oracle-Bone Collections and Reference Works Cited
Bibliography B: Other Works Cited 
Index